India Part One - Again!

We flew into Delhi from Kathmandu on 30th November, and after a short while of looking and getting generally confused in the airport, managed to find the pre-paid taxi counter to get a cab into town. Being the bright travellers we are, we had taken the precaution of booking somewhere online beforehand, due to our late evening arrival. My aptitude, however, didn’t stretch as far as jotting down directions to the place, so when our lonely planet map failed (again!) and our cab driver looked at us blankly, we found ourselves in a little bit of a pickle. Luckily, we knew it was somewhere off the Main Bazaar in Paharganj.

After frantically trying to persuade us to look at his ‘Uncle’s’ hotel - a common tactic from cabbies and rickshaw drivers who get commission if they take you to certain hotels - we got dropped off on the Main Bazaar and decided to locate the place by foot. Following half an hour of dodging dodgy touts we managed to find it and made our way to reception, being careful not to bump into the herd of cows eating cardboard whilst milling around the front door. After a quick trip out for a curry and a pair of ear plugs, we decided to call it a night.

We were up early the next day to have a bit of a look around the city. After a curry breakfast, we wandered up and down the Main Bazaar taking in the sights, sounds and smells! The overpowering smell in the city was wee. The gentlemen of Delhi have no shame in relieving themselves up against a wall in broad daylight, indeed it seems as though certain walls have been placed there purely for that purpose! It was certainly a pungent affair, but the cows didn’t seem to mind as they roamed free through the streets of the Capitol poking their heads into rubbish bins looking for morsels! I took the plunge and purchased a pair of linen trousers as I appeared to be the only chap in the whole of Paharganj wearing shorts. When in the trousers I looked positively local, but still appeared to be attracting the same amount of stares as before. Next time I’ll go for the wig.

Next on the list of things to do on our only full day here was to go to Delhi’s Red Fort, a big red forty thing about half an hours tuk-tuk ride away from our guesthouse. It took ten years to build (from 1638 to 1648) and was quite impressive if not particularly thrilling. There were lots of different buildings in the complex to look at including two museums and some other stuff. Well worth a look if you ever find yourself in Delhi and have an interest in red forts built in the 1600’s.

After what seemed like an age, we caught another tuk-tuk back into town, via Connaught Place which was a park in the middle of town. We got dropped off having decided that we’d walk through the park on our way back to Paharganj - quite a shortcut. Unfortunately, the bloody book didn’t tell us that there was only one entrance / exit for the whole park, and so after walking through the park in the early afternoon sun, we found no way out, and had to make our way back to the place we’d entered the bloody thing! About two hours behind schedule, we arrived back in Paharganj, after passing what must have surely been Delhi’s biggest ‘wee wall’ - it pen and inked well rank.

By far our biggest mission of the day was to visit Delhi train station and attempt to book our train journeys for the next few weeks. We’d read lots of scare stories online about how the trains get fully booked, and if you were too late arranging it, you’d have to sit in a carriage that sounded comparable to South West Trains’ rolling stock. Getting to the tourist booking office was a mission in itself as we had to evade the clutches of a number of dodgy touts telling us we were going the wrong way, and that we had to head to a ‘different office’ first! Luckily, the book had forewarned us about all this nonsense so we were able to ignore it, but I would think a number of people find themselves in some sticky situations.

Anyway, it turned out that our plan had worked, and by arriving at half past seven in the evening - half an hour before the office was due to close - there wasn’t a queue in sight, and we got down to booking four train journeys, stretching out over the next ten days: a three hour jaunt to Agra leaving the following day, followed by a ten hour trip to Varanasi on 3rd (arriving on 4th) then a mammoth thirty hour beast from Varanasi to Mumbai on 7th (arriving on 8th) and finally an eleven hour jaunt from Mumbai to Goa on 9th December. Luckily, we had booked early enough to get our class of choice - 3AC - meaning air conditioning and six seats per compartment - third best.

We were up early the next day, eager for our first experience on the Indian Railways - the company with the second largest number of employees in the world at 1.8 million. We arrived at the platform, and after quite a lot of confusion, managed to find where we were meant to be standing, which corresponded to the carriage we’d be in. We even found our names on a printed passenger list on the platform! All very impressive. What wasn’t quite so impressive was the smell on the platforms. Upon peering over onto the tracks, we found the source of the smell. It appeared that the tracks were not just used for trains, but also as a public loo, for both small and big jobs! It absolutely stank, and it had both Lauren and I gagging, fearing for our recently-consumed curry breakfasts. It didn’t appear to bother the rats though, who were having an absolute field day. It didn’t take long to spot perhaps the most unfortunate of the 1.8 million, who’s job it was to clean the tracks. Luckily for him he’d been issued with a power hose, and I was pretty sure he enjoyed the amount of secondary spray hitting the platform. Definitely worth standing behind the yellow lines.

Our train was just half an hour late (presumably due to the wrong type of poo on the track), but we found our seats easily enough, and were sharing with a Japanese chap and an Austrian who was a dead ringer for Augustus Gloop. The journey passed without incident, aside from us being overcharged for our veggie lunches, and we arrived in Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, at about half three in the afternoon.

We wandered around for a bit and found a decent enough hotel, which had fantastic views of the Taj Mahal from the roof-top restaurant, before heading into the town to have a look around. It was a pretty basic town - dust roads, more cows wandering around eating random things, but quite a few places for us to eat and drink if not a lot else. Our plan in Agra was basically just to see the Taj Mahal the following morning at sunrise and then head on to Varanasi on our sleeper train in the evening.

As my alarm went off at five the next morning, the groan next to me told me that our sunrise viewing was in serious jeopardy. Lauren had been up most of the night with ‘double trouble’, meaning that when it wasn’t coming out of one end, it was coming out of the other. To put it in modern terms, she was uploading and downloading with very fast broadband, and it wasn’t showing any signs of letting up. She bravely got dressed nonetheless, and just as we were ready to leave, had a sudden ‘upload’, just making it to the loo but resulting in a speckling of the lower trousers. Not funny, and straight back into bed.

I set the alarm for a couple of hours’ time, hoping things might have cleared up a little (especially the bathroom) and luckily, by then, she was feeling a bit better. We got our stuff together and headed for the Taj Mahal via a café and the pharmacy, for a spot of light brekky for ’im and some Imodium for ‘er.

The Taj Mahal was spectacular, however there’s not an awful lot to say about it. Built by an old Emperor, it was started in 1631 and finished in 1653 as a memorial to his wife who’d popped her clogs giving birth to their fourteenth child. Unfortunately for the Emperor, just as he’d got the job done, one of his sons decided to overthrow him, and imprisoned him in Agra Fort, just down the road. Ironically his cell at the fort had a great view of the Taj Mahal from the window, according to my book. The things children do to get their hands on an inheritance!

Anyway, as I said, the palace looked amazing, even to Lauren who was struggling again with the gut-rot. After a few hours looking around and taking the obligatory photographs, we headed back into Agra for a spot of light lunch before heading to the train station later that evening to start our first ‘serious’ train journey - a ten hour sleeper to Varanasi.

There was a bit of a hoo-haa as we boarded our train and found our seats taken up by a pair of chancers, but after a stern look from yours truly, they leapt out of our seats and we put down our beds down for the night. The beds were pretty comfortable, but it wasn’t too easy to sleep because of the bloody racket going on in the carriage.

In London, its not uncommon to come across unpleasant young yobbos on public transport who like to play music out of their mobile telephones for everyone to hear. You’d ask them to turn it down, but it would probably result in getting stabbed, so you just grin and bear it. On the Indian trains, it’s not just the young but everyone who has a mobile phone plays their bloody music out loud! This meant that sleep was not exactly forthcoming. Luckily I had packed the Delhi earplugs in my hand luggage, and so managed to get about four hours sleep before the train arrived at Varanasi at half past six the next morning.

As we staggered bleary-eyed from the train onto the platform, we were greeted by tout after tout trying to get us into their rickshaw so they could take us to the best hotel in town. After shooing them away, we headed to the pre-paid rickshaw stand which was unfortunately closed. Looking at the book, we picked out a guesthouse we thought we’d have a look at, and asked a rickshaw chap to take us there, to which he kindly agreed. He spent the journey telling us what a dangerous place Varanasi was, especially in all the alleys around where the guesthouse we’d chosen was located. He then pulled up outside a building which looked like a bomb had hit it, and where someone had scribbled the name of our guesthouse on the wall.

Both Lauren and I smelt a rat, and it wasn’t one of the ones loitering outside the guesthouse. We’d suspected that this chap had taken us to the dingiest place in town, trying to make us believe that it was the place we’d chosen, hoping that we’d then be put off by all the horror stories he’d told us on the way, and also by the state of the hotel. He’d then recommend a place nearby which was much better, take us there thus getting his commission! Sneaky bugger! Luckily, Lauren and I were alert to the possibility, and asked to see a business card of the hotel - conveniently they had none, neither did they have any paperwork confirming the name of the place! Clearly, our tuk-tuk driver, having found out the name of the hotel we wanted when he‘d picked us up, had called his mate who’d then scribbled the name on the wall outside his grotty place! We dismissed the driver, who was getting a bit eggy because he could see his commission slipping through his hands, got out our lonely planet, and walked the rest of the way through the warren of alleyways where the most dangerous thing appeared to be the cow pats. Twenty minutes later we arrived at the place we’d wanted to be dropped at earlier, which turned out to be full! What a morning!

We decided to stop for a spot of brekky (Lauren was now fully recovered), and then continued our search for a guesthouse, and soon found a good one, right on the bank of the Ganges, at Schindia Ghat. The only room available was the ‘penthouse’, which we snapped up straight away!

We were told never to leave anything outside our room, and by no means take any food up there, as there was a particularly aggressive troop of monkeys up there! The views from the top were amazing though.

As mentioned, Varanasi, thought to be the oldest town in the world, is situated on the banks of the River Ganges. Life in the town revolves around the eighty or so ‘ghats’ which are big open paved areas leading down to the river where people do everything from wash and swim to play cricket and socialise.

There are also a couple of ’burning ghats’ where the town’s dead are cremated in full public view - fairly grisly stuff. On our first day, we wandered up through all the ghats, taking in the huge array of colourful sights and sounds - a very entertaining way to spend a day here. As well as being a meeting point for many of the city’s people, the ghats were home to a multitude of cows, goats and dogs who seemed to spend their whole day taking things easy.

Back from the river, the town is a warren of alleyways - absolutely impossible to navigate, and very, very easy to get lost! There were some great little restaurants hidden away there, though it was difficult to find them for a second time! One of our favourite places was a restaurant where you had to sit on cushions on the floor, and put up with mice running all around you - they were obviously attracted to the cheese fondue we’d ordered. Wondering around the alleys was a great way to spend another day, though I’m not sure I’ll get used to seeing dead bodies being carried openly in the streets, on their way down to the burning ghats.

On our final morning, we got up early for a dawn boat ride down the Ganges, to see the ghats coming to life at sunrise. It was freezing, but a great experience, though our boat-rower didn’t seem to be enjoying it at all, given the permanent scowl on his face!

One of the most amusing things was seeing the local kids screaming and sobbing as their fathers forced them to jump into the Ganges to wash in the freezing temperatures! I’m not sure whether they were afraid of the cold, or afraid of the skanky river water which is officially septic, and very, very rank.

After four days in Varanasi, it was time for the big one - the thirty hour train ride across the country from Varanasi to Mumbai. We weren’t much looking forward to it, and had stocked up on a plastic bagful of fruit to stop us getting scurvy like people did when my Dad was young, and they had to make long boat trips to discover new lands. The train started in Varanasi, so fortunately there was no problem with ne’er-do-wells taking up our seats. We did get a slight shock, however, when we reached our compartment and found none other than Augustus Gloop from the Delhi/Agra train! He acknowledged us briefly before burying his head back into his bar of Cadbury’s.

The train journey, though long and boring, was packed with good train food - the food on India Rail is great and cheap to boot. You can get a Vegetable Thali (basically a plate of rice with four or five different curries and sauces, a papadom and a couple of chapattis and some rank curd stuff) for 40 rupees - about 55p! The chai-wallahs come round every ten minutes selling cups of delicious steaming sweet tea at 5 rupees, and you can also take your pick from samosas and numerous other treats that pass through the carriage on a regular basis. So, after boarding the train in Varanasi at half past ten in the morning, we finally arrived in Mumbai at half past four the next afternoon! Phew!

We’d booked a place already at Mumbai, and had opted for somewhere pretty near the train station, as we had an early train to catch the next day. This left a bit of late-afternoon sight seeing around town and we managed to squeeze in the only sights mentioned in our book or our area - the Flora Fountain which wasn’t really working, and the big town hall, which was quite impressive.

Although virtually everyone we’d spoken to had disliked Mumbai, the city seemed quite nice from what we saw of it - but no real reason to stay longer than a day or so. We finished off the day with a great Thali meal before heading to bed to get some sleep before an early train down to Goa to start the final half of the final leg of our journey - to south India, and the beaches!